This is a beautiful essay. Maybe Jack just loved Max. We forgive a lot of things for love. They seem to have filled a need one for the other. We don't always know why or need to.
As my father’s OTHR daughter, I’ll concur that Shadbolt’s generosity in the relationship must have been made possible by the security of his position as the far more acknowledged— and celebrated— artist. That, and Jack’s kind nature, surely explains much. But I have to disputes the assumption that Shadbolt was the superior artist. While I generally resist these kinds of measures where art is concerned, I’d argue that our father was every bit the artist his friend was and possibly more. This surely ate away at him.
This is an extraordinary piece, Rona, as you know .. and on so many levels for me. I think we have so much to talk about, as daughters of painters, daughters of fathers who painted, daughters of parents who licked their art wounds. As Jack looked to Max and as they looked to Emily Carr, I’m looking to you for the years you’ve spent digesting this experience and coming to terms with being the child who, by her existence, apparently throttled his ambition. There’s so much compassion in this piece that you must have climbed toward, and that I personally feel arriving for me, internally, which is really the project of memoir, I think, this understanding. And understanding yields people not parents, yields, empathy. And from that, for me, a self acceptance. Yikes, so much to respond to here. You’ve shot me between the eyes.
I think Jack got something valuable from the friendship, a sort of artistic noblesse oblige. Jack was the superior artist or at least the artist with the superior career. So by allowing your father to vent Jack was "giving back" with no risk to his own self-esteem.
I think what Jack got was mainly affirmation that art mattered. It was not about admiration, which he had plenty of, but about the recognition, by someone he respected, of the highest artistic principles. His self-esteem did take a hit because, like most serious artists in any medium, he often had a sense of falling short in some way. The art establishment didn’t notice but Max Maynard did.
My sister has captured our father beilliantly here. It’s a huge challenge for a writer, to portray a character as complex as this one. Aspiring writers can learn much from studying how she does it .
Thank you, Joyce. This essay will never be done. I am still attempting to capture not only who our father was but who Jack was and the nature of my burden of resentment , which became a little lighter that day on the mountain but stayed with me for a long time.
I remember this essay, Rona, and applaud your skill in crafting it as a way of coming to terms with the memory of your father. I'm reminded of the relationship between my father and his brother, a Catholic missionary priest who spent decades building schools in West Africa. My father was younger by a year, and they were two of seventeen children born to parents who lived in a small house on a farm in rural Ireland.
My uncle was a calm, peaceful man, tolerant and easygoing, most often smiling and teasing my father when they got together, which was not often. He embodied the grace of goodness, I thought, compared to my father, an impatient man with an explosive temper, which alcohol ignited to violence, most often against his children. I could never figure out why my uncle loved my father.
I've come to believe the answer lies in their shared experience of the Church. When he was thirteen, my father was sent by his family to a seminary where he trained to become a Catholic priest. He left after four years and was promptly disowned for bringing shame on his family. My uncle chose his vocation when he was thirty, and I can only imagine his experience at the seminary was very different from my father's. I once asked my father if he believed in God. "No," he said. "I've seen too much to be a true believer." But he still went to mass every week to keep my mother happy.
What shame your father carried. Perhaps your uncle remembered him as a child not yet cursed with the taint of betrayal. Some people, like Jack, are a le to separate the bitterness of the aging adult from the high hopes of the youth.
One of my favorites of your writing. Your words soar and fly like the car catapulting down the mountain. Some friends see aspects of us we cannot ourselves see. Overall it is part of the amazement that with a father who apparently was checked out much of the time, and an overly critical mother, you are such an even person. steady in the best ways.
A short time before he died, my wife and I visited my Dad's best friend who knew everything about my father with flaws and virtues, more virtues than flaws, all mixed together. In his old man's recliner, by Dad's best friend looked into the vacant distance before him to the face of my father who had died over a decade before and said to no one in particular, "I LOVED that man." It was the best gift that my Dad's best friend could have ever given me.
I wonder if your Dad knew how lucky he was to have a friend who saw his (rather large) failings but stood loyally by anyway. I wonder if he knew his daughter would grieve for him, despite his poor performance in what should have been the role of his life - the role of Dad. You and Jack are better people than I.
I wrote about my Dad today, too, as many writers did on this Father's Day. As I read about the difficult/abusive/neglectful father-child relationships some writers experienced, I admire the agency and grace in their writing. And, I am grateful for the kind, gentle man I called Dad.
Linda, how I used to envy kids with a “real” father. It took me many years to forgive my father for his failings. My encounter with Jack softened me, but a stone of resentment remained. Jack was not only the better painter but the better man, as my father surely knew. He felt profoundly, incorrigibly unworthy. It’s why he drank.
Hate is too easy. The shortcut. The lower road, wide to accommodate much more traffic. Love is more work, the high and narrow road where one of the people that you meet along the way will be yourself. I appreciate your essay because verbal abuse my mom and siblings experienced after Dad's weekend drinking, and the physical abuse on his own body from his own cup, for the kind of calisthenics that we had to go through. My best friend, whose house full of kids, no alcohol, dogs and love was often a place of refuge for me. She would occasionally spend the night At our place, and don't get me wrong, there was joy and there was really good home cooking, a big backyard, and color TV, yes how about that, but later in life she confessed that it was so confusing to her watching my dad go on a demeaning whiskey rant at night then everyone would have pancakes around the table the next morning and no one said a word about it. No complaints, no memory, just a big fat freaking elephant. So, we did love him but it wasn't just because of blood, we had to do the math He was a good provider, he was a shrewd business person, a devout Democrat and politically active, and he loved the Commonwealth of Kentucky. So what if we had to pluck him out of the shrubs a few times at 2:00 a.m.? I wish she would have had a long time friend like your dad had with Jack. We moved a lot through the southeast And there was really no time to make solid friends. Unless it was after 5:00 p.m. at the bar but that vaporized once he had to go home. Think heaven's for Jack and all the Jacks in the world! To recognize the core and the goals of a dear friend and patiently wait for discovery. Thank you for writing this story It's the first constructive moment of my Monday!
Cindy, there are so many stories like yours and mine. Not enough Jacks to open the portal of understanding. Part of the bafflement for kids is the unpredictable swings from light to darkness, which of course are never acknowledged. Thank you for sharing a little of your life with us, and welcome to Amazement Seeker.
Thank you, Rosy, and welcome to my virtual front porch. There are so many of us perplexed children of tormented and addicted parents. It can take a lifetime to understand and forgive. Other perspectives, such as Jack’s, help a lot.
The other reason is that a lot of your newer subscribers may never have seen this piece the first time. I say, repost freely! I re-read things all the time. xo
This is a beautiful essay. Maybe Jack just loved Max. We forgive a lot of things for love. They seem to have filled a need one for the other. We don't always know why or need to.
Love is a mystery, isn’t it? Jack’s wife hated my father for his corrosive attacks on her husband, but Jack held fast to their complicated friendship.
Sure is. Yes, I read about his wife, here. And we also need our protectors, don't we? Love you, Rona! xo
As my father’s OTHR daughter, I’ll concur that Shadbolt’s generosity in the relationship must have been made possible by the security of his position as the far more acknowledged— and celebrated— artist. That, and Jack’s kind nature, surely explains much. But I have to disputes the assumption that Shadbolt was the superior artist. While I generally resist these kinds of measures where art is concerned, I’d argue that our father was every bit the artist his friend was and possibly more. This surely ate away at him.
Can we agree that Emily Carr outshone them both? The McMichael, our suggested outing for your visit this way, has some very fine ones, well displayed.
The McMichael is always worth a visit! :)
This is an extraordinary piece, Rona, as you know .. and on so many levels for me. I think we have so much to talk about, as daughters of painters, daughters of fathers who painted, daughters of parents who licked their art wounds. As Jack looked to Max and as they looked to Emily Carr, I’m looking to you for the years you’ve spent digesting this experience and coming to terms with being the child who, by her existence, apparently throttled his ambition. There’s so much compassion in this piece that you must have climbed toward, and that I personally feel arriving for me, internally, which is really the project of memoir, I think, this understanding. And understanding yields people not parents, yields, empathy. And from that, for me, a self acceptance. Yikes, so much to respond to here. You’ve shot me between the eyes.
Eliza, I appreciate the connection we have made through stories. We should talk. I will DM you.
I think Jack got something valuable from the friendship, a sort of artistic noblesse oblige. Jack was the superior artist or at least the artist with the superior career. So by allowing your father to vent Jack was "giving back" with no risk to his own self-esteem.
I think what Jack got was mainly affirmation that art mattered. It was not about admiration, which he had plenty of, but about the recognition, by someone he respected, of the highest artistic principles. His self-esteem did take a hit because, like most serious artists in any medium, he often had a sense of falling short in some way. The art establishment didn’t notice but Max Maynard did.
My sister has captured our father beilliantly here. It’s a huge challenge for a writer, to portray a character as complex as this one. Aspiring writers can learn much from studying how she does it .
Thank you, Joyce. This essay will never be done. I am still attempting to capture not only who our father was but who Jack was and the nature of my burden of resentment , which became a little lighter that day on the mountain but stayed with me for a long time.
I remember this essay, Rona, and applaud your skill in crafting it as a way of coming to terms with the memory of your father. I'm reminded of the relationship between my father and his brother, a Catholic missionary priest who spent decades building schools in West Africa. My father was younger by a year, and they were two of seventeen children born to parents who lived in a small house on a farm in rural Ireland.
My uncle was a calm, peaceful man, tolerant and easygoing, most often smiling and teasing my father when they got together, which was not often. He embodied the grace of goodness, I thought, compared to my father, an impatient man with an explosive temper, which alcohol ignited to violence, most often against his children. I could never figure out why my uncle loved my father.
I've come to believe the answer lies in their shared experience of the Church. When he was thirteen, my father was sent by his family to a seminary where he trained to become a Catholic priest. He left after four years and was promptly disowned for bringing shame on his family. My uncle chose his vocation when he was thirty, and I can only imagine his experience at the seminary was very different from my father's. I once asked my father if he believed in God. "No," he said. "I've seen too much to be a true believer." But he still went to mass every week to keep my mother happy.
What shame your father carried. Perhaps your uncle remembered him as a child not yet cursed with the taint of betrayal. Some people, like Jack, are a le to separate the bitterness of the aging adult from the high hopes of the youth.
One of my favorites of your writing. Your words soar and fly like the car catapulting down the mountain. Some friends see aspects of us we cannot ourselves see. Overall it is part of the amazement that with a father who apparently was checked out much of the time, and an overly critical mother, you are such an even person. steady in the best ways.
Thank you, Gail. I feel lucky to have shared that outing with Jack. I’ll be reliving it forever.
A short time before he died, my wife and I visited my Dad's best friend who knew everything about my father with flaws and virtues, more virtues than flaws, all mixed together. In his old man's recliner, by Dad's best friend looked into the vacant distance before him to the face of my father who had died over a decade before and said to no one in particular, "I LOVED that man." It was the best gift that my Dad's best friend could have ever given me.
Oh, do I ever get this. Nothing like knowing a difficult parent was loved and valued.
This was my Dad. ❤️https://open.substack.com/pub/themjkxn/p/smsgt-joseph-jay-hessinger-usaf?r=1qts0e&utm_medium=ios
A handsome man.
I wrote this yesterday for my Dad, and I used what I wrote in my comment here.
https://themjkxn.substack.com/p/happy-fathers-day-d76
PS: i’d love to see more of your Dad’s paintings. 😎
The unloved lives of our fathers…gorgeous.
I wonder if your Dad knew how lucky he was to have a friend who saw his (rather large) failings but stood loyally by anyway. I wonder if he knew his daughter would grieve for him, despite his poor performance in what should have been the role of his life - the role of Dad. You and Jack are better people than I.
I wrote about my Dad today, too, as many writers did on this Father's Day. As I read about the difficult/abusive/neglectful father-child relationships some writers experienced, I admire the agency and grace in their writing. And, I am grateful for the kind, gentle man I called Dad.
Linda, how I used to envy kids with a “real” father. It took me many years to forgive my father for his failings. My encounter with Jack softened me, but a stone of resentment remained. Jack was not only the better painter but the better man, as my father surely knew. He felt profoundly, incorrigibly unworthy. It’s why he drank.
Gorgeous essay. What a friendship.
Thank you, Sheila. I learned so much from this friendship.
Thank you, Sheila.
Hate is too easy. The shortcut. The lower road, wide to accommodate much more traffic. Love is more work, the high and narrow road where one of the people that you meet along the way will be yourself. I appreciate your essay because verbal abuse my mom and siblings experienced after Dad's weekend drinking, and the physical abuse on his own body from his own cup, for the kind of calisthenics that we had to go through. My best friend, whose house full of kids, no alcohol, dogs and love was often a place of refuge for me. She would occasionally spend the night At our place, and don't get me wrong, there was joy and there was really good home cooking, a big backyard, and color TV, yes how about that, but later in life she confessed that it was so confusing to her watching my dad go on a demeaning whiskey rant at night then everyone would have pancakes around the table the next morning and no one said a word about it. No complaints, no memory, just a big fat freaking elephant. So, we did love him but it wasn't just because of blood, we had to do the math He was a good provider, he was a shrewd business person, a devout Democrat and politically active, and he loved the Commonwealth of Kentucky. So what if we had to pluck him out of the shrubs a few times at 2:00 a.m.? I wish she would have had a long time friend like your dad had with Jack. We moved a lot through the southeast And there was really no time to make solid friends. Unless it was after 5:00 p.m. at the bar but that vaporized once he had to go home. Think heaven's for Jack and all the Jacks in the world! To recognize the core and the goals of a dear friend and patiently wait for discovery. Thank you for writing this story It's the first constructive moment of my Monday!
Cindy, there are so many stories like yours and mine. Not enough Jacks to open the portal of understanding. Part of the bafflement for kids is the unpredictable swings from light to darkness, which of course are never acknowledged. Thank you for sharing a little of your life with us, and welcome to Amazement Seeker.
Just so lovely. A moving and relatable glimpse into the complications of long-term friendships, and father-daughter relationships.
Thanks so much, Carol.
I can only imagine how your father's disappointed life impacted you and Joyce. My father was silent and I'm still untangling that loss for me.
Silence can hold a world of pain.
Indeed.
Rona… I , too, am a daughter of a bigger than life alcoholic.
I so loved this essay.
My father has been gone since 1997…… there remain many unanswered questions. But I can reflect on Dad and his relationships. Thank you ….
Thank you, Rosy, and welcome to my virtual front porch. There are so many of us perplexed children of tormented and addicted parents. It can take a lifetime to understand and forgive. Other perspectives, such as Jack’s, help a lot.
I remembered this from the first time. I liked it then and I like it now. Full of complexity.
Thank you, Ann. I don’t understand why people apologize for reposting. Why not repost a strong piece?
The other reason is that a lot of your newer subscribers may never have seen this piece the first time. I say, repost freely! I re-read things all the time. xo
I completely agree - especially when you have loads of new subscribers. I intend to add in the occasional old one when the mood takes me.